


somewhere, this is truth

by xpityx



Series: to a stranger [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-25
Updated: 2016-02-25
Packaged: 2018-05-23 04:06:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6104400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xpityx/pseuds/xpityx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Obi-Wan had entertained thoughts of getting some uninterrupted sleep once back in their shared apartments on Coruscant, then he had been sadly mistaken. He pulls himself out of the dark reaches of what he has come to assume is his own personal Hell, and allows himself one, brief sob before untangling himself from both his sweat-soaked sheets and the tendrils of nightmare that have followed him.</p><p><i>I would never do that</i>, he thinks, not for the first time, <i>I would <b>never</b> hurt Anakin.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	somewhere, this is truth

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by the delightful [AmyH](https://www.fanfiction.net/u/491141/), despite having never watched the movies :)

 

 

He had stumbled, so great was the shock. Only his training saves him from a blaster shot through the shoulder as he struggles to regain his place in the here and now. A black swell of complex feelings he refuses to study too closely roll through him, fueling him to fight harder and faster than before. He feels the faint drum of surprise ripple through his clone fighters as he abruptly changes direction and fights with stunning ferocity towards the ruins of the east temple. If Obi-Wan could see him, he would be subjected to a three hour lecture about letting his feelings rule him, but Obi-Wan is unconscious, and Anakin has to get to him.

 

\--

 

Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi gains consciousness slowly, dragging the detritus of a nightmare with him into the waking word. He gasps quietly as he comes fully awake, ever mindful of his emotions and the example he strives to set for his former Padawan...

 

...who is currently sleeping next to him on a narrow cot in the bunk they share on the Excelsior, his mouth open and a thin line of drool connecting him to his pillow. Well, Obi-Wan’s pillow.

 

He frowns, highlighting the deep lines of his forehead that Anakin had taken great pleasure in pointing out only last week. The fact that he was the main cause of his former Master’s premature aging had merely seemed to amuse him further.

 

Counting back his own, echoing heartbeats Obi-Wan knows he has been unconscious for nearly four hours. Plenty enough time to get off Thosa, the dead planet they had been on searching mouldering graves and crumbling mausoleums on the orders of the Council. They had hoped to find the remains of a former Separatist base that was rumoured to have been set up there. Instead they had found an ancient defense system, complete with battle droids, buried deep enough that they hadn’t been able to sense it until they were almost on top of it.

 

And clearly, plenty of time for Anakin to panic.

 

Perhaps he had triggered an explosion? He remembers heat and ash and then nothing. A shudder runs through him, causing the sleeping Jedi Knight curled up next to him to stir.

 

“Obi-Wan?” Anakin blinks blearily up at him before running the back of his hand over his mouth, “Are you OK? What happened?”

 

“There was an explosion, and I’m fine, despite the fact that my only pillow is now soaked and smells like the inside of a tauntaun.”

 

Anakin glares, presumably on the verge of denying any such trespass, before looking down and seeing the truth of the matter for himself. He rolls gracefully out of the cot to his feet, evidently deciding a tactical retreat is the better part of valour.

 

“That’s another one you owe me, Master.” he says as he makes his way out of their bunk, projecting smugness through their Force-bond.

 

Obi-Wan allows himself half a second of relief, whether at Anakin’s seemingly easy acceptance of his explanation, or the fact that they were both still alive he couldn’t have said, before getting to his feet to deliver his report to the Council.

 

\--

 

There is something wrong with Obi-Wan.

 

It has been two cycles of the ship's night since he’d woken up to Obi-Wan leaning over him, looking pale and tired (and hadn’t _that_ been embarrassing - he hadn’t meant to fall asleep in the same bed as his former Master), and there were two more to go until they reached Coruscant: hopping in and out of Republic-friendly space as they made their way back from the _dumpa_ end of the universe.

 

It wasn’t that he was angry with Obi-Wan for lying to him about what had happened on Thosa, _well_ , he thought, trying for absolute honesty with himself if no-one else, _not_ _ **too**_ _angry_. Force knew they kept enough from each other. Sometimes he looked at other Jedi and wondered if it would be so terrible if they told each other the secrets Anakin was sure they all carried, like that they had loved, that they still love. That they felt fear and uncertainty, and that they weren’t always sure that they were doing the right thing.

 

Other times he thought it was just him, that he was the only Jedi who ever felt these things, who ever felt anything at all.

 

 _That’s not fair_ , he admits to himself. He knows Obi-Wan cares for him deeply. He’d felt it through their Force-bond sometimes, and remembered occasions when he’d been young when Obi-Wan had come back from meetings with Windu or Yoda distant and untouchable, before forgetting himself and allowing Anakin to fall asleep in his lap when he was supposed to be meditating.

 

Anakin was aware that he hadn’t been an easy Padawan to train, and knew he wasn’t an easy Knight to work with. For all that they bickered, he was just so kriffin’ grateful to Obi-Wan sometimes for sticking with him at all that he felt he owed it to his former Master to allow him his secrets and half-truths, but it was hard when he could feel how he was suffering. He didn’t think Obi-Wan had slept more than three hours all together since the first time he’d woken up. He’d always had nightmares, but these seemed different somehow: more potent. Twice he’d been woken up by the intensity of the fear and despair pouring through the Force, and twice he feigned sleep as Obi-Wan had sat on the edge of Anakin’s bunk while he calmed his ragged breathing into something approaching normal.

 

 _Just two more cycles until they were back at the Temple_ , Anakin tells himself, and then all he needs to do is knock out Obi-Wan again so he can drag him to the Halls of Healing.

 

No problem.

 

\--

 

If Obi-Wan had entertained thoughts of getting some uninterrupted sleep once back in their shared apartments on Coruscant, then he had been sadly mistaken. He pulls himself out of the dark reaches of what he has come to assume is his own personal Hell, and allows himself one, brief sob before untangling himself from both his sweat-soaked sheets and the tendrils of nightmare that have followed him.

 

 _I would never do that_ , he thinks, not for the first time, _I would_ _ **never**_ _hurt Anakin._

 

He had promised himself on the Excelsior that he would speak to Yoda the second he arrived at the Temple, fearful that he become infected by some foul Sith relic. However, despite his exhaustion, he had been so sure as he stepped off the ship into the blood-warm, orange dusk of the place he thought of as home that he had outrun his nightmares.

 

He stops in the middle of their apartment and reaches out with the Force to confirm what he already knows: Anakin is alive and well, sleeping deeply just five feet from where he stands. Slightly reassured, he makes his way towards the ‘fresher. _He has_ _taken more showers in the last few days than he has_ _in the last week_ , he thinks, not without humour.

 

As he walks back into his room, washed and wearing clothes he has not sweated through, he is momentarily confused: has he wandered into Anakin’s room by mistake? His bed has been re-made and Anakin himself is curled up at the far end, his back to the door.

 

“Get in.”

 

He was sure that he when he had checked not ten minutes ago, Anakin had been asleep in his own room, and yet here he is, in Obi-Wan’s bed, making slightly muffled demands.  

 

“I promise not to hump your leg.”

 

Well, he definitely isn’t still dreaming - the Anakin in his head would never say something so wholly inappropriate. _No_ , came the thought, unbidden, _the Anakin in your head curses your name as he lies dying, surrounded by fire and ash, cut down by your own hand._ Obi-Wan turns his head sharply to the side, as if he could dispel the thought with physical force.

 

He gets into bed, too exhausted to even try to think of another course of action.

 

Anakin rolls towards him, and Obi-Wan shuts his eyes for a second, afraid of -

 

“When are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” - well, afraid of that question, if he’s perfectly honest with himself.

 

He doesn’t know what to say, and in that moment he is so tired he can’t ignore the impulse, so he reaches up and tucks a stray curl behind Anakin’s ear, fingers resting briefly on the warmth of his skin.

 

“Go to sleep, Anakin.”

 

\--

 

Obi-Wan knows he should not hold onto hate - he understands the consequences of letting such an emotion rule him, but he has felt the purity of true hatred in his time nonetheless: when Darth Maul cut down Qui-Gon, and again when Doku crippled Anakin.

 

And now, as he witnesses this man who wears his face again and again fail Anakin so completely. He doesn’t know the starting point, but he has watched the ending more times than he cares to count and he _will not_ fail his Anakin as this Obi-Wan so obviously has.

 

He will not.

 

\--

 

 _Obi-Wan seems to be on the mend_ , Anakin muses as he prepares to head out on another mission. If all goes well, he will only be gone a few days, and Obi-Wan has assured him he’s feeling better. They are both studiously ignoring the fact that Obi-Wan’s ability to sleep seems to wax and wane in direct proportion to how physically close he is to Anakin.

 

There have been a couple of incidents that Anakin has mostly put down to a lack of uninterrupted sleep, the last one being this morning when Obi-Wan had actually told him he was proud of Anakin, causing a moment of shock that had shaken loose a need that he had thought long ago purged: he’d been desperate for brief a second for the kind of physical reassurance he’d sought from his Master when he’d been young, but he had reminded himself sharply that he was a Jedi Knight, and _Jedi don’t hug_ , as Obi-Wan had told him pointedly when he was 9 or 10. He had never tried again after that, and Obi-Wan had appeared pleased at his apparent independence.

 

Anakin frowns to himself as he goes over the earlier scene again: it was a foolish thing to want. The physical intimacy, sexual or otherwise, he enjoys with Padme has long sufficed, and he’s not sure why he thought of it now. To want that physical bond from more than one person was… Well, he isn’t sure exactly what it was, but it was ridiculous nonetheless and he had assumed he was over this. He is 23 years old, for Force’s sake, and a Jedi Knight to boot.

 

“Anakin? If you don’t go now you will be late.” The _as usual_ hung in the air, unspoken.

 

“Yes, Master.” Anakin replies, only half listening to himself as he heads into entrance hall with his bag.

 

Obi-Wan is already waiting for him - he reaches out to Anakin and for one, stomach-churning moment he thinks Obi-Wan has sensed his earlier musings and is going to hug him, but he simply puts his hand on Anakin’s shoulder, as he has done a hundred times before.

 

“It is only two days, there’s no need to look so glum, Anakin. By the time you return I will have fought off this space flu or whatever it is.”

 

Obi-Wan squeezes his shoulder once and lets go, turning to head back into their living quarters.

 

Anakin stands for a second, abruptly full of grief for all the silences that lie between them, before mentally shaking himself and heading out into the fading evening light.

 

\--

 

“Not Sith, not Jedi either,” Yoda declares, eyes closed in concentration and three rough fingers held near Obi-Wan’s forehead, “a great tree I see, with many branches.”

 

“So I _am_ dreaming of the future.”

 

“All truth, perhaps, but not all truth here.” Yoda eyes him, knowingly, “Help it would if you told me that which you dream of.”

 

Obi-Wan looks away, not wishing to deny the Grand Master outright, but equally protective of anything to do with Anakin.

 

Yoda harrumphs, but he doesn’t immediately hit Obi-Wan with his gimer stick, suggesting he isn’t half as annoyed at Obi-Wan’s reticence as he sounds.

 

_Either that, or the fact that you look like a half dead womp rat is causing him to take pity on you._

 

“Let go of these dreams you must, concentrate on the here and now, be present in the living Force, Master Kenobi. Come, meditate with me a while.”

 

“Yes, Master Yoda”

 

Obi-Wan settles into a meditative pose, the red of the setting sun like fire behind his closed eyes.

 

\--

 

 _What could be worse than this?_ he asks himself, _breaking his vows in word and deed as well as feeling… being exiled from the Order... hunted down as Grey Jedi..._

 

He watches again as he, as his doppelganger, executes a beautifully poised defensive move and brutally shears three limbs off the person who is the other half of his soul.

 

_No nothing, nothing could be worse than this._

 

I loved you, he hears this other self say, but it’s too late.

 

Flames lick at his feet and the stench of scorched skin lines his throat.

 

 _I love you_ , he thinks and hopes that his Anakin can hear him.

 

\--

 

Anakin looks down at Obi-Wan, who has somehow managed to sleep through him stomping around the apartment, showering, and generally being as noisy as possible. He wants Obi-Wan to wake up and sigh, or say something sarcastic about a gorog, but instead he’s asleep, twitching slightly, caught in some dream, and Anakin is still angry.

 

Selfishly, he had debated sleeping elsewhere for what was left of the night when he had arrived back on Coruscant, not feeling in a fit state to face Obi-Wan straight away. He had been irritable and morose for the duration of his mission, and had had to make a conscious effort not to let those feelings spill over and affect his troops.

 

Unusually for him, he had spent his scant down time in meditation, in an attempt to stem the tide of his temper.

 

 _They have known each other for 13 years_ , he thinks, forcefully, _why couldn’t they share a bed when one or the other is sick or sad?_

 

Why shouldn’t they comfort each other? What was so wrong with this feeling? What was so wrong with _him_ that he could never seem to purge it? That he always cycled back to this need, this lack in him that was absent in all other Jedi?

 

Anakin slips into the bed and curls towards Obi-Wan, close enough to reach out and touch should he find the strength to.

 

He closes his eyes and hopes for sleep, and with it, perhaps some peace.

 

\--

 

Obi-Wan awakens, briefly lost between this world and his nightmares in a way that is becoming sickeningly familiar to him.

 

The sight of Anakin laying next to him, near enough to touch, after days and nights of watching him die, is more than he can bear.

 

“Am I dreaming?” He asks, acutely aware of the slight tremble in his voice.

 

“No, Master,” Anakin replies, the worry clear on his face, even if he hadn’t been able to feel it through the Force.

 

They lapse into fretful silence.

 

 _Coward,_ Obi-Wan jeers at himself as he struggles to battle through the gulf that lies between them. He knows the words, but not how to say them, how to fight against a lifetime of conditioning to give voice to this one thing, this one truth he owes to Anakin. The truth he hopes will save him, will save them both.

 

\--

 

Anakin faces Obi-Wan in the darkness, only the small strip of light from under the door allows him to see the gleam of his eyes as he lies a handspan away.

 

“I kill you.” Obi-Wan states, the words flat: all emotion wiped away. “In my dreams - nightmares I keep having, I kill you. Over and over, I cut you down and leave you to die.”

 

“Master,” Anakin pauses, shocked, but not afraid - he could never be afraid of Obi-Wan.

 

“I have failed you, Anakin, I thought I was saving you, but I have done nothing but fail you.”

 

Anakin gapes at him for a second, before regaining control of his vocal cords. “What? No, Master, never.”

 

Obi-Wan continues, in that same terrible, blank tone, as if Anakin hadn’t spoken. “I have always spoken of the dangers affection and attachments, and yet did nothing to curb my own, and worse! I lied to you, by omission, if not directly.”

 

Obi-Wan stops for a breath, and Anakin would’ve chosen this moment to interject, had he the words to do so.

 

“I want you to know that whatever you decide to do in the future, I will always support you. I will always be your friend, Anakin: I will always choose you.”

 

Anakin finally reaches for Obi-Wan, wanting to stem the tide of his confession. He had thought, once, that he would give anything to know the depth of Obi-Wan’s feelings for him, but now, feeling the despair that accompanies his admission, he only wants him to stop. Obi-Wan is relentless, though, and like festering poison he spills out the truth that he has held onto for too long.

 

“I would choose you over the Order, and the Force, Anakin, I would give my last breath so that you could have one more.”

 

Anakin somewhat awkwardly pulls Obi-Wan into an embrace. “I’d always thought I’d want to know how deeply you felt for me, but,” Anakin swallows, uncertain, “you have to know that I couldn’t live in a world without you.” he continues, softly, still sure that admitting such was the worst thing a Jedi could do.

 

Obi-Wan grasps him more tightly in reaction to his words, “I would never hurt you.”

 

“I know.” Anakin replies, and he kisses Obi-wan’s forehead, wanting to offer comfort but at a loss as to how, “I know.”

 

He can feel Obi-wan struggling to get his emotions under control, their Force-bond wide open between them.

 

Anakin kisses him again, this time on his cheek, lips against his rough beard, and then again, and finally, with courage he didn’t know he possessed, he kisses his former Master fully. It is a dry press of lips, over in a second, but Obi-Wan looks as if someone has just up-ended his whole world-view.

 

 _I love you_ , Anakin thinks, and hopes that Obi-Wan can hear him.

 

“Anakin…” He starts, but Anakin just leans forward and kisses him again, just as chaste and sweetly as before.

 

“Shut up, Obi-Wan.”

 

Another kiss.

 

“I...” Obi-Wan tries, for all the world like he has forgotten how to complete full sentences.

 

“Obi-Wan: it’s OK”

 

Obi-Wan nods, distantly, before focusing suddenly and completely on Anakin, and it feels like the heat of dual, midday suns on his skin.

 

Obi-Wan tangles a hand into Anakin’s hair and kisses him deeply, without any of the hesitation Anakin himself had shown. Anakin moans, and feels his face heat to hear himself make such a noise in front of his former Master. _Because of_ his former Master.

 

It comes to him after long minutes that he is no novice himself, and he flips them so Obi-Wan is underneath him and Anakin is straddling one of his muscled thighs. His hips hitch a little, without his permission, and he can feel the twitch of mirth on Obi-Wan’s lips.

 

Anakin gives up on pride entirely when Obi-Wan pushes his sleep trou down to knead his ass, the feeling of cool air on him as he’s exposed is too much for him, and he says something horrific in Huttese as he buries his face into Obi-Wan’s shoulder.

 

He tries to hold onto some semblance of finesse as they grind against each other, Obi-wan turns them again, using a tendril of the Force to stop them slipping off the bed altogether, before removing both of their sleep pants so they are naked against each other.

 

 _A frivolous and inappropriate use of the Force_ , thinks Anakin, and feels a hiccup of laughter, but Obi-Wan chooses that moment to bite down hard on the tendon between his neck and his shoulder, and the sound becomes a moan.

 

 _This_ is what he had been missing: he had thought he knew every inch of Obi-Wan Kenobi: every scar and mole, every sigh and quirked eyebrow, but sensing him start to come apart as they share all thought and sensation, Anakin feels as if he is becoming someone else, someone better: as if they both are.

 

\--

 

“I love you,” Obi-Wan confesses, after, into the warm skin behind his ear as they lie curled around each other, “I always have.”

 

Anakin, ridiculously, finds himself suddenly on the verge of tears. He grips the hand at his waist and Obi-Wan grips back just as tightly, until he can be still again.

 

\--

 

Somewhere two blue lightsabers clash and the universe spirals into darkness, but not here. Here Obi-Wan lies quietly next to his lover and waits for sleep to claim him.

 

He does not dream.

 

**Author's Note:**

> The soundtrack to this, in case anyone has any interest, was Hocico's [Not Human](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSZrtHMXXtY) and Manufactura's [The Divine Discontent](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxGoy-8uN3w).
> 
>  
> 
> I'm [xpityx](http://xpityx.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr for anyone who wants to come chat about headcanons with me :D


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